Having never read a Greg Iles novel – or even heard of him for that matter – I guess my expectations for True Evil were a little low. After all, as intriguing as the dust jacket description made the book sound, I was anticipating nothing more than your average, cookie-cutter thriller…something to pass the time until the book that I REALLY wanted to read was released.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I cracked open True Evil and became immediately enmeshed in the lives of FBI agent Alex Morse, Dr. Chris Shephard and villains Andrew Rusk & Dr. Eldon Tarver. These four main characters, though a bit stereotypical – the fragile heroine, the unwitting hero, the egomaniacal madman – are skillfully realized through crisp dialogue, convincing motives and adequate background information. Add to that a plot that is part suspense, part murder mystery and part thriller, not to mention elements that could be out of a Michael Crichton story – a scientifically researched scenario that is at once fantastical, yet frightening in its implications – and you have all the makings of a first-rate fiction novel. And I haven’t even gotten around to talking about the incredible pacing of the book or the command in which Mr. Iles narrates the story through all its little twists and turns…although I did think the ending was tied up a little bit too neat.

Still, overall I was pleasantly entertained by this novel, so if you’re looking for an intelligently crafted story that is fun to read, hard to put down and possesses more depth that your run-of-the-mill thriller, then True Evil is definitely a book worth taking a chance on, and I for one, am very happy to have been introduced to Mr. Greg Iles…